Massive Government-Led Australian Piracy Crackdown On The Way

The Government hates piracy, and Attorney-General George Brandis is the man in Canberra who wants it gone from our shores. And from the looks of things, he’ll throw just about every weapon he has at the problem until it goes away, including three-strikes programs for those caught downloading content and a requirement for ISPs to potentially “take down” websites hosting infringing content. Brace yourselves: a crackdown is coming.

Speaking this morning at a Copyright Law forum in Canberra, Attorney-General George Brandis said that he’s considering a whole raft of measures to curb the runaway problem of online film and television piracy in Australia.

Brandis indicated in his speech that he’s considering taking up the charge again for a three-strikes system that sees offenders warned before action is taken against their accounts (emphasis added):

The Government will be considering possible mechanisms to provide a ‘legal incentive’ for an internet service provider to cooperate with copyright owners in preventing infringement on their systems and networks. This may include looking carefully at the merits of a scheme whereby ISPs are required to issue graduated warnings to consumers who are using websites to facilitate piracy.

Of course, this system is nothing new.

When talks were held on the potential for a “graduated” strike-based system back in 2011-12, iiNet withdrew from the talks early saying that ISPs were being forced to act as the content industry’s police force enforcing a broken system.

Another anti-piracy measure being considered by the Government is a system that would see ISPs act exactly like that proverbial police force, as the Federal Court may compel service providers to “take down” infringing websites:

Another option that some stakeholders have raised with me is to provide the Federal Court with explicit powers to provide for third party injunctions against ISPs, which will ultimately require ISPs to ‘take down’ websites hosting infringing content.

Most importantly, in framing any enforcement reforms, my preference would be to facilitate industry self-regulation, as opposed to active and continuing government regulation.

Insane leaps of logic aside, what happens if that “infringing content” is being hosted on a website like Facebook, Google or YouTube? Is the Australian government going to try and take these websites down too?

Brandis went on to say that he didn’t want to burden Australian ISPs with more regulation than necessary, but added that piracy is a problem killing our film industry, and one which must be stopped.

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don't allow broadcast monopolies.
don't allow region-locked devices to be sold in Australia.
hurry up & implement any recommendations that came out of the IT pricing enquiry that may limit the degree to which foreign companies can gouge Australian consumers just coz they feel like it.

Brandis went on to say that he didn’t want to burden Australian ISPs with more regulation than necessary, but added that piracy is a problem killing our film industry, and one which must be stopped.

Ohhhhh no you don't, Brandis.

OUR film industry? You mean the Australian one? The only thing killing the Australian film industry is the US film industry (edit: And, to be fair, the Australian film industry not doing too bad a job at killing itself, too). And piracy is fighting THAT. I strongly doubt that 'great Australian film and television' are being pirated to quite the same extent with anywhere near the impact.

Don't try to make this about us. There's not a god-damn bit of Australian interest in these motives at all. This is all about bowing to US pressure, keeping those fucking huge parasitic, monolithic, luddite media interests in the US happy, to buy them more time before they have to streamline or adapt to the modern era.

i remember there was a time when ABC had a big enough budget to actually produce AU content. Kinda ironic for Brandis to talk about what's killing the industry when they also seem very keen to put a razor to ABC's budget.

what' the government needs to do is 'invest' in Au content & even even the FTTP NBN will go a long way to fostering creation & distribution of such content.

but the reality is, it's all about foxtel; which does NOTHING to foster local content.

Actually I believe the problem is not with the US networks /production companies. Netflix is trying to break into the Australian market (They now allow Australian credit cards and addresses) the block appears to be Foxtel and to a lesser extent the commercial channels. Foxtel doesn't want a company like Netflix to get a toe hold in Australia as it would slash their business model to just Sport and possibly news/opinion shows.
Just my 2 cents worth.

You complain that you're being gouged?? Americans are being gouged even more to subsidize entire continents that engage in electronic piracy, driving up cost for those who don't resort to stealing. The entertainment and software industries (meaning U.S. jobs) experience countless billions in losses every year because countries like Australia and China steal music, movies and games through some twisted sense of entitlement. You think it's bad in Australia? Try buying software or music in the USA sometime. Americans pay through the nose so countries like Australia and China can steal with thier noses held high under the delusion that they're the ones getting ripped off.

I agree with everything you said, but legally it's stealing and as the countries top legal officer he only sees it as that. No different if you went to JB and took the new GOT of the shelf as it was to expensive, it's still stealing. If you have a concern on media write to the communications minister, and voice you concern,

Okay, well depending on the product it may be a loss of money. Some Indie Devs and musicians get an increased market base from pirates (the ones who actually purchase the product in the end if they like it).

I would definitely not label them as completely different, because in terms of the media, when you are being sold a movie you are only being sold a load of data anyway. Sure, you can try to rationalise pirating, but in the end you are not paying any money to the respective property owners. And sure, people can say that the big corporations in America aren't missing our money, but the thing is that piracy is THE reason why electronic media is so overpriced here in the first place. With a clear fall in demand for products, they have to raise their prices just to break-even. So, who are you guys really hurting? Me, and all those other people who pay extortionate prices just to play a game!!!

I'm not weighing in on the right and wrong of internet piracy, but you call $900 million in profit for things like pirates of the caribbean, "just breaking even" then sir we have very different definitions of that phrase.

Haha, I'm definitely not thinking of Pirates of the Caribbean there. I'm more just mad about the excessive amounts of money Madman charges for anime here in Australia because 90% of people are just going to download it anyway!

Simply put; the smaller the demand, the higher the price the business will charge; and piracy creates smaller demand!

The "piracy makes a copy" where as "theft takes an original" is a red herring.

Think about it this way: Let's say you make a song or a movie and you ONLY want to sell it to people in your city. So you state this in the contract to vendors and contract of purchase. This is your property as the creator, and these are the terms that you permit your property to be sold. If someone were to start selling it in other cities, you are rightly able to sue them for breach of contract.

Piracy is breach of contract no matter which way you want to cut it and one of the legitimate roles of the state is to enforce contracts.

agree with informedgamer. Illegal downloading or copying is Illegal Use, it is not Theft and never has been, anymore than fare dodging is stealing a train. The entertainment industry would really like downloading to be called theft, and have been trying to convice both the public and governments that it should be for years. Does not make it so though, and they know it.

Well, the (at time) Labor government was no good either. As soon as i can kick Abbot out i will. Also with the liberals in Vic!

Why can we have more people like Scott ludlam in politics? Even though he is a bit of a hippie, he is a really good bloke and someone who has integrity. I would vote for him every time if i could. Give me more of him!

Under Labor we didn't have a recession during the GFC when the rest of the western world did; we started an NBN; my local school got a shiny new hall that generations of kids will get to use. Now we having rising unemployment; a probably raft of new laws (to make criminals of all of us); stopping the NBN; the probably decimation of medicare... and lots of other things I don't want to mention :-(

One thing most people forget however is that the Liberals really aren't controlling what they claim. The senate is controlled by The Greens and Labor? What we effectively have is a labor/greens government with a liberal figurehead.

That rising unemployment was caused by Labor. in 07 it was at 4,8%. They survived the GFC with the $88 billion worth of assets that yes Howard left them. Unemployment was predicated by Chris Bowen last May to rise to 6.8 under current Labor policies, as it rose every month under Labor's 6 years, as well as their $16 billion blowout. Not to forget the surplus we didn't get that was promised 104 times, the lowest level of trade in 20 years when Asia is booming and the largest debt in our 112 year history.

You mean the 88 billion he got from privatising Australia's assets and generally screwing over future generations?

I'm okay with privatising everything EXCEPT the infrastructure. Business can't be trusted to run roads, we get tolls. Business can't be trusted to run power, we get constantly rising power costs and the system is rarely upgraded. Business can't be trusted to run the countries telecommunications network, it results in monopolies and price gouging - both to us and to smaller businesses looking to break into the industry.

Libs supporters cry his praises, but in reality, he broke this country and it's political system.
He just got a surplus out of it.

Also, a country doesn't need surplus to function and it doesn't actually matter how much a country is in debt to itself. Look at the Libs role model: America.

That's funny, because the vast majority of world leading expert economists rate Howards era as one of the worst in govt mismanagement that contributed to the risks in the GFC.

That the economy has already started shedding jobs and losing pace within 5 months of the shift to conservative politics also puts the lie to your claims. Under the previous govt we rose to the fastest and most stably growing economy in the OECD, we achieved the maximum credit rating possible at all four ratings agencies (something that has never happened in Australian history, even under Howard) and we had growth when the rest of the world was shrinking.

That growth created our high dollar and hurt exporters, and now, when the exporters need help to remain competitive until the dollar stabilises, they are being abandoned. 150 small businesses will disappear in 2017 when the car manufacturers leave, and it will take until 2031 to get those jobs back. In its first five months, this govt has chopped 7B from GDP and 40000+ jobs from our economy, and they haven't even started chopping up govt services as that'll have to wait for power in the senate.

So you're saying that we shoudl operate at levels where we work less, have way more holidays, have much better payouts. AND we should be able to compete with the rest of the world. Get your head out of your ass.

Hey it was a Labor government who wanted a media censor under Gillard, you media freedom is safer under a Liberal government then a Labor. How is stopping stealing supporting multinationals? Oh and these multinationals employ 70% of Australia's workforce in the process.

Stupid iiNet, clearly forgot to pay their bribes (I mean, 'donations') to the LNP last October.

But really, all this does is push the cost of civil suits from the television/movie industry onto the telecommunications industry. It's an industry handout, not some high minded 'save australian film' initiative, and every single person out there can see that. I mean, why pay to investigate and prove copyright infringement and quantify damages when you can just spam email a bunch of ISPs and expect them to handle your business model for you?

Let's be honest, though - the only people who will end up getting caught are those too technologically inept to avoid it - grandmas and primary school kids better watch out!

You realise the iiNet is the biggest reason why we all have a leg to stand on against this BS move right?

The iiNet vs Movie Industry case pretty much shows that the propsed "3 Strikes Rule" *IS NOT CONSTITUTIONALLY LEGAL*. The crux of the argument is ISP's are "service providers" like water utilities and telstra. Just because someone can misuse that service does not mean it has to go and keep track of all service uses.

No way! Because I was honestly suggesting the iinet bribes political parties to avoid the potential effects of excess regulation, as opposed to making a tongue in cheek comment and picking a random ISP.

Also, pro tip: as soon as you use the term 'not constitutionally legal', you reveal that you are an Internet Lawyer who gets their jurisprudential insight from gizmodo comments and youtube videos. It's a dead giveaway when the case you are referring to was heard in the Federal Court.

And no, ALL CAPS doesn't change that.
And no, the 'crux' of 'the iinet case' was not even close to that.

Pity the only voice we have is on internet sites, which themselves will probably end up being banned/censored by the $tasi oops spelling error - long sentence - "democratically elected and democratically functioning government responsible to its electors, and liable to removal from office for oversights of real need & therefore poor performance".

Uh oh, the sniffers have my IP address. Do me a favour - let all of them know ATTICA!!! ATTICA!!!ATTICA!!!

I'm looking forward to this failing and then moving to stage 2 of the plan, where they claim that downloading Game of Thrones supports
a) Organised Crime
b) Terrists
c) People Smugglers
d) Coward Punches
e) Hoons

It's something that should get a lot more traction in official policy toward piracy, though.

The industry is trying to institute penalties which factor in an instance of piracy as a 'lost sale', which is obviously false, but no-one knows - or can know - to what degree.

If anything, there are numerous examples which show that piracy of a creative work creates awareness of it, which results in increased sales. See: Neil Gaiman's very public about-face on the issue when comprehensive piracy of his works preceded an increase in Amazon sales.

While I agree with all you about making TV, movies etc more accessible and delivered in a timely matter, it does not provide a genuine reason to infringe copyright laws.

Yes I have done my fair share of torrenting, but the fact that Movies and TV take time to be released in Australia, are expensive and often provided in a poor format, does not give any one the "right" to download illegally.

No but it gives us plenty of incentive and plenty of incentive to download illegally as protest. Nobody ever said it was right, the only reason people do it is because the alternative is usually just bullshit.

Piracy isn't killing the film/music industry. It may be damaging it a little, but it's also helping it too. The moment piracy stops, I wouldn't be surprised if media has a massive increase in profits for a few months, and then straight down.

It's always about fighting piracy, why not use it/work with it to increase sales? Fighting isn't going to help anyone.

Mmhmm good luck with that George. I'm sure your 1950s-informed approach to policing the Internet will work just fine.

So let's keep a tally of what this government has pledged to do with the internet thus far:
1 - Killed the NBN that would have given 93% of Australia access to some of the best possible download and upload speeds in the world, with the remaining 7% getting speeds far better than what most houses get now.
2 - Conducted secret negotiations with the USA to increase the scope of Copyright to make things currently legal in this country illegal via the TPP.
3 - Pledged to ignore any recommendations from the ALRC review into Copyright that pertain to Fair Use or adjusting the law to better suit the modern, internet-driven age. "The principles (of Copyright) did not change with the invention of the internet and the emergence of social media." - George Brandis.
4 - Pledged to crack down on piracy in the strongest way possible, whilst simultaneously ignoring the difficulties inherent to doing so.

So yeah, that digital economy of ours is sure looking safe and secure now, isn't it?

It's not killing the film industry, especially if he's referring to the Australian film industry.

Why's that? Because Australian films don't get released to an international audience on torrents unless it's particularly great. Otherwise if you want to watch an Australian movie, you pay for it. And I'm more than happy to do so.

Once again, the people making the decisions have no concept on how these things work. They see black and white, they don't see the reasons why people pirate and instead of tackling the disease, they're punishing the symptoms created from the root problem.

the last 2 seasons of GoT as an example, I happily bought the season pass from iTunes. it was pretty close to the perfect delivery system for that sorta thing. decent price, got it the day after it screened in the US. I had absolutely zero complaints.

Now Foxtel have exclusive rights though.... so yeah. I'm not going anywhere near Foxtel. don't wanna download it, though. don't wanna have to wait a year until its out on disc.

on the plus side, Foxtels payment to HBO has covered any losses they would've incurred from the added piracy, so the only group who lose money on piracy is Foxtel. which I'm ok with.

but excuse the tin-foil hat for a second... Murdoch owns a fair bit of Foxtel. Foxtel gets hurt by piracy. govt cracks down on piracy. the only winner is Murdoch. ie: the man who had a hand in getting the current govt into power....
we all knew this was coming.

To be fair, the backstabbing and infighting of the Labor party played a far greater hand in getting the current government into power.
Murdoch just took advantage of that to drag his candidate over the line.

that was part of it for sure, but you've gotta admit - News ltd turned the Labor leadership into one of the defining issues of the campaign, while far more important things, things that ALP had the upper hand with, were swept under the rug.

Even when GoT was available on iTunes, we were still the leaders in pirating it.

You're totally right that locking it into a single service that charges a fortune for people to watch a single program is a major factor in piracy, just like delaying things for absurd amounts of time drives people to piracy too. But I'd say a massive part of it is that no service is likely to compete with the biggest benefit of piracy - it's free, the file is DRM-free, and it's available as soon as the program finishes in the US.

That's basically my point, though - even when it's offered through these channels, people still don't want to take up the offer for *reasons here*. They're going to need to find a way to do what Valve successfully did - make people love their software platform. And Valve only really accomplished that though forcing you to use it by shutting down WON back in the day.

Really, I barely pirate anything these days. I have Xbox music, Netflix and Hulu to cover my bases. What they don't cover however are HBO and AMC shows, as they are trying their hardest to stick to the old ways. If they don't want to adapt, its their loss.

As a 10yr (in two weeks) Steam veteran, I'd say that the original implementation was horrible. We railed against it as an unprecedented form of DRM - no CD-key, it required you to go online to authenticate your copy of Half-Life 2; even if you had the CDs, it downloaded large patches in an era that was decidedly unfriendly on download limits, IF the servers were up. And in the first few days they were slammed so hard that they weren't ever up. It was the first time we'd been sitting with the discs in hand, game installed, single-player game unable to be played thanks to internet.

Now... it's more useful than not. One-time authentication is a LOT less draconian than some of the alternatives which have been devised, the connectivity has incentives by way of the social platform it provides, and they've made astounding leaps in improving delivery, accessibility, quality, and even price.

I use the social part so much that I'm now actually annoyed when something like Origin with duplicate fuctions, tries to force me to switch away and lose functionality or run an additional, redundant system.

The Australian Film industry is a joke in the eyes of the rest of the world. We're a tiny fish in a vast media sea. Just for example; The new 'Lego Movie' was made in Australia and yet was released to the rest of the world weeks before Australia.
Australia is a relatively small country in the grand scheme of things and until the Government realises that it can't just ship all of its problems away on boats to PNG then we'll have to suffer through the next 4 years.

I am a little tired of this argument, I've seen it a few times in this thread so apologies for picking purely on you.

But when people talk of the Australian Film Industry, the distribution to theatres is only a tiny end product. Whilst at the release end, we're pretty small fish our ability to create content and then export it around the world is the section that is referred to by our film industry.

Let's look at 'Happy Feet' quickly rather than 'Lego Movie' because we can see the lifetime grosses and it was also made by Animal Logic in Sydney. Now that film had an estimated budget of $100 million, a decent portion would have gone straight into our economy to pay animators et all.

Now it made just over $26 million in our domestic box office. If it had only been released here you could say it was a huge flop, you could try argue that we all pirated it or you could realise that as far as a movie going public there's not enough of us to support films that are that expensive.

However, it went on to make nearly $160 million more around the world, and another $198 million in the USA alone. It's those numbers we're more concerned with when we talk of promoting the Australian film industry.

For further evidence compare it to 'Tomorrow, When the War Began' which with an apparently more modest budget of $30 million went on to fail miserably despite the fact it made over $13 million at the box office in Australia alone.

That's right, despite costing a third and managing to bring in nearly half as large a box office taking it failed. Because it was culturally limited to Australia, seeing only $3.5 million more in foreign sales with a pretty appalling couple of thousand dollars listed as it's US take.

The Australian Film Industry is an export industry, it's why it was hit so hard when our dollar jumped up.

Addendum: I didn't intend to attack 'Tomorrow, When the War Began.' I actually thought it was a strong movie, and that it's biggest mistake was creating it in a budget that it would be near impossible to make back.

Yes, I agree. I hate it when I'm trying to torrent the latest hollywood blockbuster and the only hits I get are for Australian films. Suuuuuuuuuure.

If anything, its undermining the US industry! I think in the few exceptions I've gone looking for an Australian film, I've been shit out of luck. How can I have any confidence in a minister when they clearly have no idea of what they're talking about.

high aussie dollar & lack of interest in investing in Aussie content is what's killing the film industry. Sadly, It's much cheaper for the big networks to buy a show from US than it is to produce themselves.. The government could subsidize the industry a bit to invest in building the industry; but under the current government this would never happen.

It's got nothing to do about addressing the cause of piracy, It's just a big stick that is being used to push us to pay more for Murdochs mediocre foxtel service.

Pretty ready to quit Australia. How about they build us a proper internet infrastructure? Surely the best and most beneficial solution for this and many other reasons. With fibre to the home it will be feasible for Australians to stream HD content and media of the future. Then the content providers (like Netflix) will come to Australia as the uptake of high-speed broadband and subscriptions grows and it becomes an easy, cheap and practical way of accessing decent content. The fad of illegal downloads will slowly dissipate - as it has with music (e.g. Spotify).

In my heyday I maybe downloaded 2 hours of content a week. Now I stream at least 7-10 hours a week from Netflix, then the other 70 & 20 percent respectively of my usage are covered by games and youtube. Rarely ever watch free to air when Netflix has what I want, when I want it.

Back when I was on my old ADSL2 connection, torrenting was a better option because my connection was so bad I couldn't stream much. Now I am one of the lucky few who is living in an NBN area so content delivery is easy. Funny how people were saying that Fibre was only really for pirates, I went the complete opposite way!

I pay to unblock geo block then I pay a subscription to Hulu and I pay a subscription to slacker.
So what happened to that senate hearing that encourage citizens to overcome geo block by all means with the law behind you here. How come studios are happy with that arrangement? Don't they want us here to see everything last hear everything last?
absolutely love slacker over all the crap available here, I will pay and I will continue to pay them overseas to listen to them over some crap JB hifi music unlimited.
Hulu Plus is so good there is nothing in Australia that can beat the service Hulu offers at the price it offers so I will continue to pay Hulu to watch them over some stupid Australian Telstra try hard version of wannabe Netflix.
Just smells smack of Harvey Norman-esque in forcing authorities to tax its citizens for all costs associated in collecting taxes for asserting their freedom to shop overseas.

They aren't happy with that arrangement. The recommendations from the hearing were summarily ignored, and the government (both the previous incumbents and their work picked up and run with by the current incumbents so they're both fucking assholes on this point) is kowtowing to US demands in the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty being worked on at the moment, which would actually make circumvention of geo-blocking illegal.

Essentially what happens with the 3 strikes system is that consumers will get punnished without any evidence of wrong doing needing to be provided by the "content owners". I upload a word document with my recipe for deep fried, crumbed eel, called "Star Wars" and Disney can contact my ISP and have me disconnected.

Agree. At this time I would like to throw to Newton's laws - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

Action: Aussie customers getting shafted by big studios by having to pay higher prices for the same content or having the content delayed by months.

Reaction: Aussies become some of the worlds best pirates.

Action: Industry asks Government to crack down on their own citizens for piracy while maintained their high prices.

Reaction: Proxy Servers / VPNS etc...

If they are serious about reducing piracy, they should not be trying to stop piracy, but ask themselves why people are pirating in the first place. It shouldn't take long to work out, GOT is a classic example.

Also music piracy birthed all of the festivals and live gigs we see in the last decade popping up.

before music piracy bands would be crazy rich from cd/tape sales and not many bothered to come to smaller states for live gigs.

now they have to tour to get crazy rich... so everywhere gets to see their fav bands live if they want. & this brings revenue back into our local econemy when holding these gigs and theyre still rich enough so dont feel too sorry for them.

I'm sure the Libs know exactly what they're doing. "harming the Australian Film Industry" is a line designed to appeal to our moron ocker voters who hear "Straya" and go "Bloody oath!"
George Brandis knows that the only people who benefit are the wealthy lib party donaters who make money by using the Australian population as a secondary market for Hollywood crap- Roadshow, Foxtel etc.

Let's assume piracy goes away and everyone is buying media. Where will that money go?

Will it go to the group that performed the song? The people who wrote it? Or will it go to the record executives who will funnel it off to international branches of the record label, so they can tell the artist, that sorry, you didn't make any money off the $1m to produce, $20m in profits album.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... LET ME BUY IT AND I WILL.
This insanity that shows are available in other markets before ours and at a much more affordable rate means that unless I live in a bubble and not go on the internet I can't watch shows without being subjected to spoilers before they are released in Aust.
I have a season pass for Agents of Shield - I paid for it up front. Due to the insane monopoly that TV stations get to view the show before I can stream it I have had my experience of the show marred by the fact that memes and jokes and other bits and pieces from the episodes aired in US are showing up in my Facebook feed or on sites I visit.
The sooner the media companies realise we are global world not sectioned off into discrete markets the better. Give me what I want when I want it and I will pay for it.
I would have bought GOT season pass but I know I won't be able to watch it until Foxtel has shown the whole thing... so whats the point? I am almost forced to torrent or setup VPN just to be able to watch a TV show...
Get real and fix the problem with access NOT with illegal access. Mandate that media companies MUST set the same price for Australian consumers and remove ALL ability to allow exclusive right to entertainment.
Then maybe it will be a fair and proper system.

The problem with 'equal pricing across the board' is that the system is a lot more complex than we always give it credit for.

Australians have a high standard of living, with high wages and high prices. All those bus advertisements and TV spots we see for Game of Thrones don't come cheap - they have to pay to have an Australian presence, to pay Australians to handle the non-digital (and a certain element of the digital) distribution of their product, and that cost to them is much higher than it is in, say... India. You also have issues with the local economy, such that pricing adjustments need to be made such that the citizenry will actually consider it an item they can afford to purchase. You charge US prices for a DVD in Bosnia, which ends up costing them about as much as they might buy a car, and no-one buys it. So some regions get special lower pricing. Obviously, they don't want all the US customers exploiting this difference to buy Bosnian versions at a fraction of the 'regular' cost, so there's geo-blocking and all that crap.

The point where this gets out of hand is when they inflate the price not because of the costs they have to pay to distribute, but artificially inflate the price because they know the market will support it. Which is exactly what happens in Australia.

It's pure profiteering, and we stupidly buy into it by actually paying the prices on offer. And the option to simply 'not pay' is of limited effectiveness, because it calls into question the desirability of the product. A perfect storm of demand not matched by sales is the piracy situation we have here. But rather than adjusting their pricing to alter the market and make up for the 'lost sales', they instead decide to crack the whip and try to force people into what they want the market to be, because they got real used to those tidy profit percentages and can't tolerate them going down.

Have they even considered how they're going to get info on downloaded content through a VPN...? I think for the most part this nonsense is just chest thumping to appease those who think they're being hard done by...

They're waging a separate, quieter war against VPNs. There are a number of VPNs who are being targeted for blocking and legal action as international customers use them to bypass geo-blocks. Youtube in particular is especially aggressive, whereas companies like Netflix (who know that those users are probably going to sign up for a subscription, so hey! Who cares?) are more permissive.

Some of the more aggressive blocking is being done in some surprising spaces, such as MMOs. The closest pattern I've seen is anything supported by ad-revenue, which would make a lot of sense. Advertisers pay to get their product in front of very specific groups of eyeballs. If they aim to target a group by region and can see that a significant number of IPs in that region are from a known VPN, they may deem that demographic as unreliable thus not counting toward a specific region's earnings.

Say, I'm an advertiser, I'm advertising a product only available to Japanese people in Japan, locally by retail. A website or other content provider promises to get me 5,000 Japanese people exposed to my product every hour, but I notice that 2,500 of those viewers are connecting from a VPN, which means that I'm paying the content provider to show my product to 2,500 people who quite likely won't or even can't buy my product. I'd want those 2,500 to not count. I'm pretty sure that's what happens now.

Yup, I never pirate anything I would otherwise pay for. Saying that they are losing out of my money is incorrect... they never would have had it. One exception, though, in that sometimes I will watch something and run out and buy it its that good... so in a sense, they get more money from my pirating than would have happened if I didn't pirate.